


Flyboy Vs. Gravity

by Feveredfrenzy



Category: Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1
Genre: Bondage, Consensual Kink, Established Relationship, Explicit Sex, M/M, Porn with Feelings, Rimming, i blame Cam
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-09
Updated: 2017-06-09
Packaged: 2018-11-11 13:35:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11149491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Feveredfrenzy/pseuds/Feveredfrenzy
Summary: There's a million reasons why this thing Cam and John have shouldn't work, and only one reason it should: they want it to. So they do what two adrenaline junkie pilots with no sense of self-preservation always do when confronting the impossible. They make it work. (Set sometime in SG:A Season 5).





	Flyboy Vs. Gravity

**Author's Note:**

> Full disclosure, I have no idea where this came from. I was rewatching SGA and thought hey, why don't I write some short, kinky smut starring my OTP, that sounds fun. 10K later and most of it feelings dressed up in a sharp-looking porn overcoat, and...man, I really don't even know what this is. Oh well. Please do consider leaving a comment if you enjoy! I have a few other Cam/John fics sitting in my brain and I'm wondering how much of an audience is left for these guys. (Because a kinky smut one shot is the best way to gauge reader interest in a pairing, obviously. *rolls eyes*)

In one of those rare moments when Cam has too much time on his hands and nothing else to distract him from self-examination, he thinks there’s something really funky tucked away in his DNA. A kink in his base code, his hard-wiring, his quintessential Cam-ness.

Another length of rope is wound underneath his chest then, drawing tight just south of the curve of his pecs. The start of his next breath turns into a sharp inhalation instead. Slightly coarse bristles hang off the hemp and scratch at his nipples when John tugs the far end free of being trapped between Cam’s weight and the mattress. It highlights his unintended pun - kink, heh - because apparently he’s doomed to be giant dork even in his attempts at navel-gazing. A little huff of a laugh bubbles up his throat, spills past his lips. Also unintentional. The kind of thing that normally his well honed discipline would have stamped down before it ever escaped his belly, where all his laughs birth from. But then, giving up control, letting go, that’s half the point of indulging in these little scenes.

John stills anyway, dropping a heavy hand on Cam’s back. An anchor that rests comfortably between his shoulder blades. It’s warm and beaded with the beginnings of sweat, but despite the hot Atlantean afternoon Cam arches his spine and burrows into the touch as best he can manage.

“You alright there?” John asks. His voice lacks any inflection beyond the hint of affectionate mockery that underscores pretty much everything he says to anybody he doesn’t actively hate. As though he’s just seen Cam take an amusing but harmless tumble, like he’s not in the middle of turning him into a piece of human origami, increasingly helpless with each new knot John tightens in the harness he’s building around him. It can be exasperating sometimes, the way there’s no audible difference between Lt. Colonel Sheppard commenting on a semi-suicidal battle plan and John checking in with his boyfriend as he ties him up for an afternoon of kinky sex. But then, Cam supposes, that’s half the point of being in love with John Sheppard.

“All good,” Cam assures him, tilting his face sideways to offer up a relaxed smile. The arousal churning impatiently in his balls begs to differ, as does his dick, thick and eager where it presses up against his stomach. Wouldn’t be long now before it’d be begging him to try fucking the mattress, just pump his hips at least, give it a little friction, anything to - fuck. He groans, eyes squeezing shut ‘cause the smirk on John’s lips really isn’t helping. “Just get on with it already.”

“And I thought you were supposed to be the romantic one,” his asshole of a lover says, laughing without laughing in that way that still sends lightning racing up and down Cam’s spine, no matter that it’s almost twenty years since he first witnessed that little trick of John’s and realized he was fucked. The bed dips and rises in a rolling motion as John stands. His palm leaves Cam’s back and drags lightly north to linger on his head, fingers carding through short brown hair in an intimate caress the inventors of the regulation cut had certainly never planned for. Cam manages to swallow a whine at the loss of contact when John moves down the side of the bed, busy again with his ropes. He’s not that far gone yet. Would be soon enough, sure, but just because he was a total slut for the way his lover could ignite goosebumps with the lightest brush of a fingertip, that was no excuse to go and make it easy for him now, was it?

The self-examination still taking notes in the back of Cam’s brain conceded that probably wasn’t a normal line of thinking for the bedroom. But they were so far from normal as both individuals and a couple, it was barely worth mentioning. Competition was built into the core of whatever they were, whatever this thing they had was called, if there even was a word that could describe it. It had been from the start, from those first cocky, catch me if you can grins they’d slung at each other in flight school, that mutual challenge to fly _faster, farther, higher_. It was a main component of the glue that had kept them bound together for two decades, dragged them back into each other’s orbit no matter how long it had been since they’d seen each other last, no matter how many lesser satellites had tried to cut in during the in between times. It wasn’t in either of them to settle, not for less than they could be, not for less than they could have. Wasn’t like they’d never tried, never lay awake at night and counted the miles and the laws and the years that stood between them. Listened a little too closely to that voice that whispered it shouldn’t have to be this hard, it was okay to look for easy, for convenient, for safe.

But easy and convenient and safe were for other people - happier people, Cam privately thinks in those moments he allows himself to be bitter. He doesn’t begrudge anyone for making those choices, knows John doesn’t either, sometimes wishes they could be content with all those things. They just were never really options for two adrenaline junkie pilots in love with the sky and the stars, with adventure and duty and everything else that adds up to a life expectancy short in years but long in legends. Either of them could have gotten away with Icarus as a call-sign if it wouldn’t have been considered tempting fate. Sometimes Cam looks at himself in the mirror, the start of wrinkles around his eyes, the hint of gray in his hair, and he’s honestly, sincerely surprised his flight’s taken him this high without the wax melting from his wings yet. That he hasn’t yet crashed back to earth in the tailspin he was born knowing would be his end, gravity’s last laugh after a lifelong war against it.

That’s the surprise that sticks with him, the one unexpected left in a life that’s run out of other ways to stump him. Far more of a shock than opening a file on the Atlantis expedition and seeing Major Sheppard’s name plastered across it, John’s everpresent half-smile greeting him from the picture paper-clipped to the top right corner. Cam remembers closing it and spending the next twenty minutes in his office at the SGC laughing, a worried sergeant sticking her head and asking if he was alright. _I saved the planet crashing my spaceship in a battle over Antarctica,_ he wanted to explain. _Of course John Sheppard went to another galaxy and led another man’s command into impossible victories against a superior force._

He didn’t say any of that. It’s not like she would have gotten the joke.

No one would, really. So they’d settled for laughing at each other with their eyes when they passed in the halls of the SGC. Shaking hands in Atlantis as though it were the first time they’d met. Exchanging mutual acknowledgments of ‘Colonel’ to the other’s decorated dress uniform when attending a summit at Homeworld Command, only the tiniest quirk of lips to acknowledge they were each busy removing said wardrobes in their mind. Neither had ever had much of a uniform kink. They both preferred the scar-decorated skin underneath. More honest. More real. They spent enough time with lies and cover stories and make-believe as it was.

Then he’d returned to his apartment after a long mission offworld and found John Sheppard on leave. Casually camped out in front of his building without explanation, without even a hello, just the promise of a challenge shining out of his eyes in the dark of a two o’clock morning. Cam had shrugged and unlocked his door. Wasn’t the first time. Whatever came next, it wouldn’t be the last time either. They’d both aced navigation back in flight school, after all. Detours could only lead them astray for so long. They always course corrected to magnetic north in the end.  
  
And when he showed John to the bedroom, their gazes meeting with that unspoken, timeless _faster, farther, higher_  hanging between them, it took all of thirty seconds before they were wrestling each other out of their clothes and mapping all their new scars with lips and tongues and teeth. And when Cam lost that first heady race to the top, he just grinned from the bottom as John fucked him into his floor. There was always next time.

Hell, there’d been a lot of next times.

“Almost done,” John promises, gliding a finger down the back of Cam’s thigh to the rounded muscle of his calf, wrist sliding into a firm grip around Cam’s ankle as he lifts it off the bed. He folds the limb at the knee, presses calf to thigh and holds it there. Cam’s leg goes electric with tension, muscles drawn taut without his brain actually giving the order. Its John’s touch that’s pulling their strings. He drags another length of rope up onto the bed, across Cam’s leg, hairs standing on end in its wake like lightning rods set quivering in an ion-heavy atmosphere. Loops a cinch knot around Cam’s ankle, winds the rope between calf and thigh, around the bottom of his thigh, back over the outside of his shin and around it goes again, weaving a figure eight that folds his leg tighter and tighter until John finishes it off with another loop and a knot, just under the base of the ankle. His movements are slow and methodical, as much care and attention paid here as when doing the pre-flight check on a puddlejumper. He tests each pass with the rope to make sure it’ll hold. Only ties knots where they won’t press up against the skin or sit on a cluster of nerves. Slides two fingers under the rope every handslength to ensure its never so tight as to cut off circulation. Hums a small, satisfied sound as he ticks off each box on his mental checklist.

It’s comforting and casual, the way he can find a routine in everything, a way to normalize even the most bizarre of things they’ve come up with behind closed doors (and they’ve come up with some doozies). It’s not like vanilla sex doesn’t still do it for them, just like flying a puddlejumper has never diminished the rush that comes from handling a good old 20th century fighter jet. But no one knows better than them that there’s always something more, something else, something new. They live their lives in the fast lane, always ten miles over the speed limit, racing the sunset. Why should it be any different in here? ‘Sides, it gets lonely and boring, the months spent a galaxy apart, just counting the days until they can squeeze some privacy out of the next time their stars align. They figured out a long time ago that getting creative helps speed up the clock; researching and prep work and planning logistics on something new and different turns the slow crawl of months from agony to anticipation.

John circles the bed, lifts Cam’s other leg, repeats his work there. Those last few months of anticipation return with a vengeance, hit Cam like a brick to the gut. Force all his breath from his lungs in an explosive exhalation, eyes springing wide as John tightens one last knot. Cam’s whole body lurches into attempted motion, synapses firing all over as he trembles from head to toe. Some of what they have planned is new, but not the bondage part. And just like always, there’s a roaring in Cam’s ears when that last rope goes taut, a shift in the air the moment he goes from mostly helpless to completely helpless. When instincts take over and he has to kick, wriggle, flex, test every muscle in search of an escape. When his fingers scratch at empty air behind him, his wrists crossed and bound in the small of his back, rigged to the ropes forming a chest harness that runs under his pecs and over his shoulders, making a neat, tidy package of his whole upper body. When his legs flex, testing the strength of the rope holding his lower limbs tight and compact, toes curling, lording their freedom of movement over every other inch of him. The ropes hold. There’s no give anywhere that Cam can find. John’s work is thorough and well executed. It’s only when Cam fails to find an escape, concedes that he’s well and truly contained, that he finally starts to relax.

It’s weird, he’s pretty sure. And hard to explain since it’s so goddamn counter-intuitive. As many times as the two of them have spent tied up, handcuffed, in chains or otherwise locked up and at the mercy of various hostiles, as many times as that’s been accompanied or followed by lots of pain and badness and very little to write home about, this probably shouldn’t feel as good as it does. Shouldn’t make his cock as hard as it is. And sure as hell shouldn’t be considered relaxing. Panic attacks, traumatic flashbacks, all of that would make a lot more sense. It’s about what they’d expected the first time they’d tried it, after much wariness and a lot of careful planning. It was basically a challenge to themselves, when Cam initially proposed it - wondering if they could find something to enjoy in it the way plenty of people who lacked their colorful history seemed to. If they could do it without breaking, and thereby prove they weren’t already broken. At the time, it was a challenge they were both half expecting to lose. Course, as that had never stopped either of them before, they couldn’t really lean on just that to justify not following through.

(Probably should have. Just didn’t. A mutual awareness of how completely fucked up they both are has always been another large component of the glue binding them together.)

But the reality was nothing like they’d been wary of, definitely not what Cam had been expecting. Fact was there was just no comparing the experience of being helpless in the arms of someone he knew would never hurt him to their experiences being at the mercy of those they knew were all too eager to. It was a visceral thing, not a matter of semantics. A qualitative difference between the two scenarios that was so bone-deep, they’d never once accidentally wandered too close to setting off any of the emotional landmines linked to their various captivity-related traumas. Ironically, it’d been just the opposite. The first time they were each captured off world after their initial foray into bondage, they’d both noted having an easier go of it. There were different memories to draw on, rather than just past horrors. A sense of _this too shall pass_  to lean on, a reminder that they’d always found a way free before, that someone had always come.

It’s not like Cam thinks the SGC should start treating its rescued gate teams with some kind of bondage therapy regimen. This is one of those areas where he’s painfully aware that he and John are not what anyone would consider normal. Would probably make better case studies than examples to be followed. He could imagine the doctors having a field day analyzing their bizarre ways of self-medicating, the coping mechanisms that should’ve been self-destructive rather than rehabilitating, their attempts to weaponize the various issues they both refused to admit to having.

Course, doctors had also told Cam he’d never walk again, so fuck ‘em. What did they know, anyway?

“Still good?” John asks anyway, running his hand in calming circles along Cam’s shoulders and neck as he waits for Cam’s breathing to even out. He knows that it’s not fear or uncertainty that has Cam vibrating, buzzing with energy that’s restless rather than nervous. That all this was already there all along, bubbling just under the surface, bottled up, priming Cam to explode - that he’d only relaxed and let it start to leak out once he felt safely contained. He’s like the rumbling of an engine, primed and ready to go after an initial revving to test out the throttle.

But John asks because he has to ask; the asking is part of the reason why it works. They don’t do safewords when they play because neither of them considers it play. It’s sex, it’s sex with an edge. Both the sex and the edge are as real and as sharp for them as any knife, and you don’t bring a safeword to a knife fight. Cam’s only safe like this because he trusts John to watch him, go slow, be careful. Trusts John to stop the second Cam says stop, knows John trusts him to say stop the second he needs things to stop. Nothing more or less would do. There’s two adrenaline junkies living on the edge, and then there’s two PTSD-prone vets playing with fire. They’re reckless idiots, not complete fucking morons, and so it’s all or nothing, the way it’s always been with them, always has to be. The only way they know how to do anything. It’s a delicate dance of contradictions, a highwire balancing act done atop a string made of razor blades.

It’s life. It’s them. It’s complicated.

“Still good,” Cam confirms, because he knows John needs the words, needs to gauge the timbre of his voice. It passes inspection and John’s hands are under him then, slipping between him and the mattress, finding purchase, sinking into a widespread stance beside the bed. And then he heaves, flipping Cam onto his back with the deceptive strength his slim frame hides so well. Cam’s breathless, cock bobbing and jerking against his stomach, proof positive of how much he enjoyed the manhandling. It prompts a smirk from the man above him as he gathers the free ends of the ropes arrayed around Cam and stands on the bed, braiding them together before tossing the result over a rafter that runs across the length of the ceiling. He’s so obnoxiously hot when he’s being insufferable, Cam thinks. He grins back, naked and unashamed.

John finishes setting up his makeshift pulley and stands back to survey his work, survey Cam. Shrugs, sets his grip on the rope and pulls with his whole weight, no fanfare, no warning. Because of course he does. He’s John. Cam’s busy rolling his eyes when his whole body is jerked off the bed, the intricate harness of rope and simple physics lifting him fully into the air. The fulcrum point where the ropes loop over the rafter is away from the bed at an angle, so he swings a bit like a pendulum, somewhere between four and five feet above the ground. It’s not fast enough to make him dizzy, not even when he jerks his leg and accidentally pushes himself into a lazy spin. Takes awhile to shed enough momentum to come to a stop though, ending up suspended directly beneath the rafter. The cradle of ropes overhead still twists, keeps him spinning in a slight half circle, eyes fixed on the ceiling watching the decorative tiles there shift with his position. There’s a dopey half-smile screwing up his face, he’s pretty sure. Probably looks like an idiot. But who fucking cares, he’s flying.

In the grand scheme of things, the long list of moments where Cam’s thought to himself _holy shit I’m flying_ , it’s not even in the top ten, truth be told. He’s been in every type of aircraft and spacecraft known to man, has parachuted and skydived. Floated in zero gravity, been weightless in orbit, hell, they’d even had sex in a jumper once. In contrast to all of that, the ropes suspending him from the ceiling more than stand out. They’re thick and there’s enough of them and they’re placed well enough that his weight is evenly distributed; they support him without digging into his skin. They’re still tethers though, still contrivances of human ingenuity rather than an outright defeat of gravity. But then isn’t that true of any and all method of human flight? And this one is all his boyfriend’s ingenuity, far-fetched and whimsical sounding when John had first proposed it to his skeptically raised eyebrow, now a fully realized reality.

“Look at you,” Cam says the next time his slow spiral brings John fully in focus. He’s leaning lazily against the wall, arms crossed. Face half hidden in shadows, the echoes of impossible towers standing tall outside the window like fingers reaching to the sky. The braided end of the rope is tied off to an anchor point his bedroom wall has helpfully provided while he watches Cam with a faint grin Cam decides is best labeled ‘indulgent’ after a few moments’ consideration. “Shoulda been an engineer.”

“Thought about it. They wouldn’t let me have a gun though, so fuck those guys.” John shrugs and kicks off from the wall, hands shifting into his pockets as he steps closer, circling and not so subtly double-checking the sturdiness of it all. Cam jerks the other bound leg, steers his spin in the other direction to keep pace. “Besides, I’d rather look at you.”

“Aww, you think I’m pretty,” Cam teases. There’s only the slightest hitch in his voice. He’s not usually insecure, but suddenly he’s hyper-aware of hanging naked and tied up from the ceiling, all the ridiculousness that entails. The unexpected admission from John is far enough from his usual patterns that it’s knocked Cam ever so slightly off course from his, a hint of hesitancy slipping in despite himself. He’s a far cry from the innocent All-American farm boy he wears like a mask and this isn’t even the kinkiest they’ve ever done, him and John. But that’s the downside of scratching a masochistic itch that’s all about feeling vulnerable and exposed, he supposes - it leaves you feeling vulnerable and exposed.

The moment lingers, pregnant enough with possibilities to be better termed A Moment, emphasis on the capitals. John opens his mouth, closes it again. Swallows and ducks his head, smile still in evidence. At last he just sweeps his eyes up and down Cam’s naked body, a long, deliberate look heavy with heat. Cam swallows as well, his cock giving a jump at the blatant attention. Sure, he’d like to know what John almost said but. Uh. Yeah. Just that look works too.

“So what’s the verdict? How does this rank? Better than last time?” His boyfriend-lover-whatever steps close and grabs hold of the ropes stretching overhead. He hip-checks Cam’s spread legs even further apart before settling between them. His jeans scrape against the twin swells of Cam’s ass; his own erection presses through the fabric and rubs against Cam’s hole. The puckered ring of muscles there quiver as they wake from their months of hibernation. It takes Cam a second to recognize the strangled moan as his own.

“Man, I’m flying. I can’t even remember what we did last time.” He’s dazed and feeling a little drunk from it all. The smooth tickle of an ocean breeze as it breathes into the room and whispers over every inch of his naked skin, kissing each curve and line of his body as it all lays open and bare, unencumbered by pesky obstacles like furniture and clothes. The flash of heat every time he drifts through a beam of sunlight, immediately followed by the cool rush of shadows flowing in to take its place. John between his legs, flush against his ass, flanked by his thighs, the thick shaft hidden under those jeans grinding up and down against his taint like a promise. Palms cup his ass cheeks, his bare skin prickling under the caress of callouses, those strong, sexy fingers digging into his flesh, kneading his muscles. They move on, fluttering and dancing around and over his hips, gliding across his abdominals, reading sensory output and status checks from his groans and gasps and hissed breaths as John coaxes responses from him with the same deliberate reverence he applies to any flight. Cam’s often thought that if John played the piano the way he plays an aircraft’s instrumentation panel, they’d be calling him the next Beethoven.

The body-brewed cocktail of endorphins and adrenaline cloud his head with a buzz to beat any beer, domestic or otherwise. His brow furrows briefly as he focuses on what they were talking about - he probably shouldn’t have to work this hard to remember what they’d done the last time. It was always memorable, and last time had been his idea, he knew that much, knew that meant it had been John writhing naked beneath him then, babbling and incoherent in that way only Cam had ever seen, as he fell apart in pieces only Cam was allowed to catch and glue back together. Definitely should be easy for him to remember that, Cam thinks. John’s so goddamn pretty when he lets go, but its his turn to let go now, he needs it, he wants it, and so he lets it go, doesn’t go hunting for the memory in the deepest vaults of his mind where he locks everything John related away for safekeeping. He’ll remember it later, he knows, and he feels too good right now to go looking for a change of scenery, even if just in his thoughts. He’s fucking flying.

“So I win?”

Cam shoots him another eye roll and a glare for that, and John’s smile stretches wider yet. The slight shade of _challenge-champion-victory_ that tints it stirs the embers cooling in his own gut; the fire John’s proximity always ignites flares a little higher, throws up sparks as the competition they wear like armor (like camouflage, like permission) feeds the flames better than oxygen. Warmth spreads through him, excites his breath, fans the flames further. It’s only the ropes binding his hands and pressing in on his sides that let him fight off his instinctive rise to battle, force the blaze back down until it’s a steady, comforting warmth in his bones rather than an inferno singing in his blood.

“Yes you win, you anal retentive bastard.” Cam sighs and lets his head drop back til he’s watching the far wall, upside down. A wind chime made of bits of stained glass dangles in the corner, scatters rainbows across the wall when the light hits at the right angle. He’d bought it at a flea market and gifted it to John under the guise _my niece got a little enthusiastic about art class and now I’ve got twenty of these to get rid of, thought one would look good in Atlantis_  when Carter walked in on him packaging it up. He heaves another intentionally loud, over-embellished sigh. “So you going to collect your spoils now or what?”

“I’m not in any rush,” John drawls thoughtfully. The words float down to his ears as though from some great height, make him think right here, right now, they really do have all the time in the world. “You?”

“I guess I could hang around.”

He doesn’t need to be looking at John’s face to see he’s the one rolling his eyes now. And okay, it’s a terrible pun and an even worse follow-up to what they both know was John’s version of a romantic line, but he’s so caught up in how easy this is, how not weird and casual they can be even with something like this when it should feel weird or contrived or somehow wrong. The joke just slipped out all on its own and he’s so used to using his humor as a defense mechanism, a distraction when people are looking too close, that it’s nice to know that’s not all it is. That he’s a giant dork regardless of its usefulness when hiding giant, career ending secrets.

The fucker gives it all of five seconds before ruining it with a quick squeeze of Cam’s nipples, a sharp pinch that makes him yelp and bite his lip while his cock tries its valiant best to mimic a rocket launch. He was a chest man, the damn things were hard-wired to his cock and balls.

“Asshole.”

It’s affectionate, ‘cause really, he had that one coming, and the unrepentant grin John greets his raised head with would have stolen any venom left in the word anyway.

“Well it’s like they say,” John shrugs, eyes alight with mischief. “You are what you eat.”

Cam frowns and wastes a few seconds trying to parse that one as John slides to the floor, kneeling so its his head that’s between bound thighs now, the haphazard disarray of his hair the only part still visible from this angle. And John’s breath is tickling his balls, warm and deliberate as it traces a path down the curve of skin beneath them and that’s all the warning he has before John dives in, wielding his tongue like a lance as he attacks Cam’s hole and Cam thinks _oh that’s right, he’s a giant dork too_.

Coherent thought kinda goes away for awhile after that.

Cam spasms, inarticulate cries locking in his throat and fighting each other for the right to burst forth, resulting in strangled gasps instead. His fingers flail at the air beneath him, toes curl, a full body shudder wracking him from top to bottom. It’s…god, it’s fucking obscene the things John can do with his mouth, the way he laps at the skin around Cam’s hole and smoothly slips into making broad swipes of that damn tongue up and down the valley of his crack, like shifting gears without changing speed. The faint stubble of facial hair scratches at the sensitized skin left by John’s attention, wars with the fuzz that decorates his ass, rubbing, friction, and fuck, he wonders if that’s enough to generate static electricity and what happens when you combine that with the saliva John seems intent on coating every inch of him with? Worth it, he decides two seconds later when the quick licks loosening his sphincter turn into biting, the sharp edge of blunt teeth nipping lightly at the muscle of one ass cheek, then the edge of his hole when it relaxes enough for them to find a grip. His pulse is thunder in his ears, drowning out his hoarse shout but somehow he can still hear the low rumble of John’s laughter where it vibrates against his skin. He breathes it into Cam, shoves his tongue through the opening it makes, explores the tunnel inside.

Sweat beads both their bodies, his slick thighs a furnace on either side of John’s cheeks, slipping as the moisture grows. His nerves are shot, too far beyond his command to muster the control it’d take to clamp down, lock his legs. John takes care of it for him, grabs his hips with those broad palms of his, anchors him, holds him down while he squirms, not even sure if he’s trying to bring his ass closer or further away as the sloppy, thorough tongue fucking starts to feel more like an assault, breaching him, invading him. It’s not like it matters anyway because once John grips like that, there’s no making him let go.

Cam’s eyes are wild, he’s sure, unable to focus, lights and shadows a kaleidoscope he can’t be bothered with, too busy trying to find the words to convey surrender. The laughter still shivering across his skin says John probably wouldn’t take it even if Cam could offer it. He loses himself in the sensations then, forgetting about even the ropes that tether him to the ceiling while his world tunnels in on just the hands holding his hips and the tongue and lips and teeth intent on shaking him to his core. There’s a rattling down in his very foundations, the kind of turbulence that makes every bolt and screw holding a plane together bang against each other in a chaotic symphony that ends up just a roar of white noise, drowning out anything else.

Every storm has its eye though and even sex-crazed egomaniac rocket jockeys like his boyfriend need to breathe sometime, so eventually a rhythm forms. Gives Cam a chance to catch his breath, wrestle it under a semblance of control, even if its still racing faster than it should be. Lets him focus on each swipe of John’s tongue, the directions he takes, the shapes he makes. Cam narrows his eyes.

“Please tell me you’re not spelling the alphabet with your tongue.”

It’s supposed to sound stern. Would’ve probably, if it didn’t require three false starts to put it out there.

“Took you long enough,” John says merrily, poking his head up when the words come out muffled. Cam’s cock wobbles against his stomach. The tip of it flares - an angry, frustrated purple color that surrounds a bead of precum adorning the slit like a jewel - and inches to the left of its own accord, in the direction of John’s voice. Like a snake to its charmer. _Traitor_ , Cam thinks. He doesn’t really blame it though. “Your situational awareness needs work. What if we were captured and that was the only way for me to tell you the escape plan?”

“You’re such a freak,” Cam breathes. It comes out sounding like a prayer.

But he pays attention when John licks down and to the right, directly over the entrance that’s forgetting to clench down quite so tight each time it flutters closed. Darts his tongue in a swipe up and to the left. Down and right again, once more up and to the left.

“Whiskey,” Cam pants, eyes shut and picturing John’s smiling concentration, the focus that permeates everything he does but only if you know how to look.

A sharp line sketched horizontal across the skin just above his hole. Another line that starts in the middle of the last one and plunges directly south.

“Tango.”

A vertical slash of the tongue. A shorter one that starts at the top and goes to the right. The tip of the tongue wetting the middle of the first line, halfway down, and Cam knows where it’s going, exhales “Foxtrot” and pumps his hips, shoving his weight against John’s face and knocking him back on the floor on his ass, laughing all the way.

“I hate you,” Cam glowers when the dork stands back up and hovers over him. John’s face is a mess, despite the expression that plays at angelic innocence. His cheeks are flushed and stained red, wet with spit and drool and sweat and his hair’s even more distraught than usual, strands plastered across his forehead. He’s fucking gorgeous and Cam worries sometimes he doesn’t really know that, doesn’t know how to hear it even if he’s told, even if Cam could say it. “You’re…”

“An asshole, I know,” John finishes easily. He reads something in the silence that follows, tilts his head. “Was that not what you were going to say? Am I a dick, too?”

Cam takes the out. The genuine glee etched across muscles that normally only play at it is too rare. He won’t risk chasing it away with words they’re not supposed to say. Besides, he is a dick.

“God yes,” Cam spits out. Full body shudder, anticipation angling his cock forty five degrees, because he’s not the type to miss a joke the second time around and fucking hell, he’s been more than patient as it is. He needs…wants…and then John’s stooped, bent at the waist and one hand on his chest, thumb flicking the tip of one nipple while the other hand reaches back down between his legs, index circling his hole and collecting saliva with each pass before plunging it right down the center. The muscles there give way, invite him deeper, up to the first knuckle and it’s only when Cam’s busy dealing with the short circuits sparking in his brain that John opens his mouth and all but inhales the more than respectable seven inches of Cam’s cock. His mouth is warm and wet and nothing like silk but that’s the only word Cam can come up with as John contours it around the shaft, making it a glove that envelops him, holds tight, even when Cam bucks and shouts and shoves himself deeper. His boyfriend just hums and opens his throat wider, making his whole length vibrate and shiver.

Cam offers up a silent thank you to the two young, stupidly repressed flyboys who turned their hang-ups over cocksucking into a competition to see who could deepthroat the other first.

They really don’t give their younger selves enough credit, he figures. They had some damn good ideas.

John’s lips are wrapped around the base of his shaft, his mouth is a vacuum wrapped tight around every other inch of it, cheeks hollowed out as he sucks, inhales, drags down into his lungs anything that isn’t the cock filling it to bursting because John doesn’t suck his dick, he worships it. Like it’s a sacrament, like the closed doors they keep between them and discovery are the seal of confessional rather than an act of self-preservation. The finger in Cam’s ass is a piston, in and out, deeper and deeper with each thrust, an advance team drilling a path for further exploration later. It stumbles across a vein in the dark, follows it, Cam whimpering as it strikes gold.

There’s so much to handle, too much, it’s hard to pick where to focus, pointless even when he does because even if he could choose something to grip onto he’s got nothing to grip with. His hands are stuck where they are, couldn’t use them even if he wanted to and what would he even do with them? Grab John’s hair maybe, tangle it around his fingers, try and make order out of the confusion but that smacks a little too much of trying to tame him and he can’t tame John, no one can, that’s the whole point of John.   
  
They’ve done the reverse as many times as Cam’s been the one like this, where they are now. Sometimes it’s all about the competition, never about who bottoms so much as who’s top dog. Sometimes they make it as simple as a cointoss, figuring Fate’s done a good enough job steering them this far. There’s been years where they just traded off every other time, taking turns, and years where it’s been so long since they were last together they can’t even remember who went last but wouldn’t care anyway, because one look tells them what it is the other needs. It’s not an exact science. They’re not mind readers. He’s never known for sure what the bondage stuff does for John, just knows it’s different than what it does for him. They’re a lot alike, the two of them, but they’re not the same. Common ground first brought them together, not Narcissus lusting after his own reflection. It’s sort of like navigating by starlight. Relying on vague and distant constellations is well short of having the GPS coordinates, and it means waiting for nightfall to travel, but following a fixed point in the heavens will still keep you headed in the right directions as long as you stick to your course. The stars don’t change, they are what they are. Might burn out someday, science says, but they’ll all be long dead and gone by then so its a moot point.

They’re not stars, Cam knows, and he’s changed more than he cares to admit most days. He’s not the boy he was anymore than John is. But they don’t change each other. That’s the golden rule, the one thing that’s never been open to negotiation, no matter that it’s led to more than a few fights and years of aching separation. Led to John’s marriage with Nancy, he sometimes thinks resentfully, but that’s not entirely fair and he shuts himself the hell up. They’re both two square pegs who’ve had too much of themselves shaved off the edges, trying to fit in the holes everyone keeps pointing them towards. It’s all or nothing, take each other as they are or walk away. No in between. John can be impossible, knows he can be too, knows they’re both frustrating and stubborn and reckless and defiant but they are who they are and they won’t apologize for that, won’t ask each other to apologize. There’s no taming John anymore than there’s a willingness to be tamed himself. Even in this moment, mistaking his need for restraint with a need to submit would be a mistake. Their victories over each other are temporary, never conquests. There’s nothing of dominance and submission in anything they do, no assertions or commands, no matter how playful. Too many orders they should never have obeyed echo in their heads like ghosts; too many orders they should never have given haunt them like the baying of hellhounds. No matter what angle Cam tilts his head, he’s never found one from which a command looks like anything other than it is: burdens, responsibilities and consequences all rolled into one more weight laid across his shoulders.

This isn’t about submission.

It’s about the cramped confines of a cockpit, only the frame of the 302 between him and the killing cold of space.

It’s about freefalling through the atmosphere, only a pack full of string and fabric and human ingenuity to save him from splattering against the pavement.

It’s about being helpless and vulnerable and exposed in front of the one man with a road map to all the hidden corners of his heart, who holds the key to all his secrets, who could destroy him utterly with just a word - only that precious, fragile thing called trust to reassure Cam that he never ever will.

Sensation gives way to emptiness and he aches, opens his eyes because John’s heat is gone, his touch, there’s nothing but the warm breeze washing over him, chasing rivulets of sweat as they trickle down his skin. The panic is gone before it even has a chance to arrive though, because John’s right there, of course he is, standing next to him, watching him. That calm, steady half smile as he slides his shirt over his head, weight shifting back and forth while he toes off his boots. Cam licks his lips, watches every motion like a man entranced, the unbuttoning jeans, the thick curve of John’s own erection springing free as he drags down his zipper, his boxers and jeans past his knees, kicking them off as he cups himself, traces his fingers up his shaft as though savoring the freedom of his own nakedness.

He watches Cam watching him, the confident smile giving way to a quirking of lips Cam decides is best labeled shy.

“You think I’m pretty,” John teases, because they love their callbacks, the reminders of how much they’re alike. Perfect reflections not required, just enough alike that it equals not alone. Not quite the last of the endangered species they were born into, whatever the taxonomy is for reckless crazy flyboys more in love with the sky than sense. And Cam knows why his smile went shy now, even if the insecurity threading the joke here is born from a different place than the insecurity that made Cam first make it. There’s enough remembered starlight to navigate by when he answers the joke with the other half of that callback, a slow and deliberate look up and down John’s lithe form, drinking in every inch of his scarred musculature, his dark chest hair and bush juxtaposed against pale skin that never tans. He’s goddamn aerodynamic, Cam thinks, looking forward to whenever they get around to reversing this scene because of course they will, they have to, because John’s naked body was made to fly, to float, all perfect planes and no body fat and angular lines that could cut through windshear better than any wing.

He knows he answered right by the way John’s smile rejuvenates, pleased confidence blossoming anew under Cam’s appreciation. It makes Cam’s breath catch in his throat, makes him blink his eyes rapidly, because it was the right answer for him to make, but that’s not the same thing as being the right answer. That answer would have sounded more like _yes, I think you’re pretty. I think you’re fucking beautiful. I think you’re a goddamn work of art._

And he knows now, too, what it was John wanted to say earlier, when Cam first made that joke. Why the words died in his throat, why they’ll never leave Cam’s, and it hurts, it fucking hurts because it’s not because they are who they are, its because the world is what it is. Because if he said those words even once, he’d never stop saying them. Never be able to redraw a line in his head and remember not to cross it, remember where and when it was okay to say, admit, express. This goddamn masquerade they dress up for each day is hard enough as it is, a complicated choreography of what not to say, what not to do that’s never gotten any easier as the years pass, has never become second nature because it’s not his nature, has nothing to do with his nature.

It’s the shift in John’s face that makes his mind catch up to the change in his own mood. Cam tracks it like a weather map, a storm coming, reflected in the clouds darkening hazel eyes. They soften then, gentle, understanding. He steps forward, presses Cam into his side. Caresses the side of his cheek with the palm of a hand. Thumb gliding across the skin beneath his eye, strong and sure.

“It’s okay,” John says. “I’ve got you. Go ahead.”

It's permission to break. To be fragile. Absolution and a promise to put him back together again. Another strong hand firm on his back, underneath him, supporting him. Ready to catch anything that falls. Cam inhales unsteadily, breathes it in.

And he breaks.

It’s not dramatic. Doesn’t happen all at once. Starts with one of the tiny chips in his mask, one of the small grooves where the surface image of the perfect soldier had been steadily flaking away for months. Stress fractures growing through the porcelain veneer of the model military man, the heroic leader of SG-1. Kept in check only by a liberal application of duct tape and crazy glue.

He stops fighting it, stops trying to hold it together with sheer force of will. His hands can’t help, but they’re never in a position to help, too busy snapping picture perfect salutes with the one and holding up the weight of impossible expectations and responsibilities with the other. He lets the cracks grow, widen, spread across the surface like tributaries, offshoots of the river of denial and secrets and lies he spends every day swimming in, trying his best not to drown.

“It’s okay, Cam,” John says. Thumb gliding across the skin beneath his eyes again. He realizes it’s brushing something away.

The earthquake hits; the pressure constantly lurking underneath his skin finds release. The pieces of his false face fall away. Strong, reliable, brave. All the things he’s supposed to be, expected to be. Things no one can be, not all the time, not without rest, a chance to replenish, catch his breath for longer than a week between one world-threatening mission and the next.  
  
Honest, moral, solitary. All the things he’s assumed to be, without question, without fail. Unable to be the first one, forced to adhere to an arbitrary definition of the second, taken for granted he was content to be the third.

His skin feels raw and exposed underneath. Even John’s gentle touch is like sandpaper on his cheek, cradling his head between both hands. Those long, pianist fingers trace deliberate patterns as though seeing something under the surface, mapping his face the way they’ve always mapped each other’s scars. And of course that’s what John’s doing. Of course he can see them, can recognize them for what they are.

He’s got a matching set.

 _Exhausted_ , Cam mentally names one as John runs a thumb along the ridge of his jaw. _Bitter_ , he names another as a palm glides across his forehead. _Jaded, betrayed, angry_ , he lists off as fingers massage his temples.

All the things he can’t be, isn’t allowed to be.

 _In love with John Sheppard and afraid we’ll be remembered by history without anyone ever knowing that part, the most important part,_ he whispers in his head as John leans over and brushes their lips together. Cam rises into it, gives chase when John starts to move away. Captures John’s lower lip between his teeth, claims John’s mouth with his tongue, breathes John’s name into the kiss when John lets him, sinks down into it, shifts gears between soft and tender and hungry and aggressive with all the speed and dexterity to be expected of the only man Cam’s ever known who can keep up with him in the sky.

Cam lets go again, lets John pilot from there, exploring the whole of his body with careful touches. Finding knots of stress Cam hadn’t realized were there, had forgotten the muscles weren’t supposed to feel like that. It’d been so long since they’d felt any differently. Massages them, Cam’s shoulders, his chest, his ass, his thighs, back up again to grip his biceps. Pushing the skin like clay, paving over all the cracks, smoothing it in. Holding it in place while it bakes in the sunlight and the warm breeze, hardens, gains strength, firmness. A temporary fix but a fix nonetheless. It won’t last forever, but nothing ever does. Even stars die out. It’ll last as long as it lasts. Cam will break again. John will find more clay.

He wonders when it was that John got to know him well enough to break him down and reassemble him as expertly as he cleans his gun, as he restores the Mustang he’s got sitting in a garage back on Earth because no way Cam can get away with having a cooler car than him. Cam tries to find the moment where it happened, where he became the other half of him, the one who knows him better than even his own parents. Two fucked up soulmates by virtue of being the only ones missing just enough pieces to make room for each other’s jagged edges.

One day they weren’t, and then one day they were, that’s about as well as he can narrow it down. They were rivals before they were friends, friends before they were lovers. An evolution in hindsight only. Back then, it just made sense that he couldn’t battle for the top spot forever without growing to respect the guy who made him fight so hard for it. It only seemed natural for respect to grow into friendship. And friendship into. Well. Admittedly, that one had always been an eye-opener, even then.

He thinks of all the people they’d known back then and where they are now. Tries to weigh their choices against those of the military commander of an extra-galactic outpost and the leader of Earth’s premiere exploration team. There are weddings that have to be considered, invitations in the mail from near-forgotten classmates. Birth announcements, christenings, even a couple of graduations. He thinks about all the times John’s been in the infirmary without him by his side because nobody knows to tell him, remembers waking up after Antarctica and wishing he dared ask a nurse to place a call.

Cam thinks sometimes he hates the military for how much it’s taken. For how much it’s yet to take. He knows John hates it, has always hated it. His dedication to the men and women he serves with is in spite of the institution, not because of it. John just needed it to give him his wings, would much prefer they just give him a gun and a plane and let him go off and do what he has to do. It’s basically what ends up happening anyway.

He barks a laugh at that and sees John watching him. Offers a smile. It’s small but it’s real.

“You back?” John asks. He doesn’t ask where he went.

“Mostly,” Cam says. John cocks an eyebrow. “Near enough.”

John nods, takes him at his word. He’s found his way back between Cam’s legs, even if he’s just waiting, still watchful. _Magnetic north_ , Cam laughs, and it’s near enough to a joke for him to know he’s going to be alright.

“Touch me?” He asks. His voice is hoarse. “Please, Johnny.”

“I can do that.” They’re both still hard, mere proximity after so long a separation enough to trump messy emotional catharsis and middle-aged libidos. He reaches out, wraps Cam’s shaft in his grip. Squeezes. Spreads the precum all around the head of it, polishing the apple. Smirks when Cam goes rigid and breathless. “Like that?”

“Yeah. God. Fuck. Yes, like that.”

“Anything you want, baby,” John says, still smiling like the devil himself as he strokes Cam, tickles his balls with the other hand. _Baby grand piano_ , Cam thinks fuzzily, thinks _play me like an instrument Johnny_. Doesn’t say it, but it's in his eyes, maybe.

“Need you in me. Fuck.”

“I can do that too,” John agrees. Grabs the lube from the bed, rubs it into Cam, inside him, his loosened hole stretching with little protest as one finger becomes two, gentle but firm. It’s not force, it’s not pressure. It’s a push. It’s a challenge. “Still good?”

“Yeah. Good. Yeah.”

More words seem unnecessary. Brevity, the soul of wit and all that.

Cam lets his eyes drift closed while John preps him, takes his time, works him open, makes it easy. Opens them when John presses his slick crown against Cam’s hole, the thick mushroom cap atop his shaft always stretching Cam just the tiniest bit further than he’d been prepared for, just enough to feel the pleasurable burn of muscles pushed to their limit, raising the bar. Cam hisses, breathes through it. The sting inconsequential compared to the way John goes slack and still as he sinks deeper inside. Slow, steady, inch by inch, muscles ticking, twitching in John’s face. His normal composure giving way to an expressiveness that’s almost decadent in comparison, those first seconds he buries himself in Cam and makes himself at home. Cam waits for it, that moment that always comes when John bottoms out, the way his nostrils flare and his lips part and his eyes flutter. Rapturous.

And in that moment, Cam remembers why he always leaves when it’s time for him to go, why he always returns to the SGC and duty and everything a letter of resignation could finally free him of. Why he can never quite bring himself to hate the military, even when he wants to, even when maybe he should. Because the military gave him the sky. And then it gave him John. And then it gave him the stars. He doesn’t have John’s gift with numbers, can’t make them spin and dance and map improbable variations where they find themselves just as lucky without paying so high a price. All he has is basic math and no matter how often he crunches the numbers it always adds up the same way. And maybe that sounds like settling, but it’s not, the sky plus John plus stars isn’t one plus one plus one, it isn’t three.

It’s everything.

John fucks him then, or maybe he makes love to him. Maybe it’s both. Maybe it doesn’t matter at all. Cam feels full, filled, god. It hurts a little, when John picks up speed, momentum adds force, sweat matting his chest hair. Everything hurts a little. Life hurts. Deal with it or don’t. Their breaths find an alternating rhythm. Quick, short huffs of air from John, deliberate exhalations. Marathon training. His own ragged panting a more desperate counterpoint, whistling through his nose, no military composure, no calling on his own athletic instincts. Just reacting. Existing. Being. He’s shoved through the air each time John slams into him, rocking backwards and up just a little, then back down to meet again at the horizon. His cock is swollen and eager in John’s hand. The other hand reaches up to grab the rope wrapped under his chest like a harness, makes a fist, digs in. His knuckles leaving an imprint Cam won’t mind turning into a bruise, something to touch when the _Daedalus_ comes to ferry him home.

“Hold on. Tighter,” Cam says, hoarse and uneven. It’s not _I love you_ , will probably never be _I love you_. The world might change before they run out of time, give them at least a few years where they can leave the masquerade behind for good, but it’s okay if it doesn’t. They could probably do a hell of a lot to change the world if they tried, he knows that. It’s not ego talking, just the simple equation of him plus John. But they chose to save the world instead, and that’s okay too. It’s okay to pick their battles, and to be tired and spent and selfish with whatever they have left over. It’s okay to remember there are others who can fight those battles. They fight this one because they can, because someone has to and they’re good at it, no one better.

Words are just words, anyway. He’s worked with Daniel long enough to know there’s an infinite number of ways to say the same thing.

“Don’t let go,” he says instead. John’s reply is fervent and fierce.

“Never,” he says. His eyes are dark with promise and passion and heat, sparks and lightning in their depths.

A hundred jokes spring to mind, things like _chemical reactions_ and _thrusters engaging_. There’s something white hot igniting at the base of Cam’s cock, his spine, a supernova in bloom. Fires of creation, that sorta thing. It builds, bubbles up, pushes forth. John’s dick hits just the right spot, tips the balance, critical mass. _Houston we have liftoff_ , Cam laughs. He’s flying backwards now, pretty sure he can feel the ropes, the tethers, his anchors all falling away. Escape velocity. Breaching orbit. Breaking free of gravity one more time.

Someday, Cam knows, gravity will win. It’s the one enemy he’ll never beat. Someday it’ll reach up and pluck him out of the sky, drag him back down beneath the ground and hold on tight, never let him go. That ending was written before his story even began.

But you don’t fight just because you know you’ll win. You fight because you can’t not fight, because the call to action is inscribed in the marrow of your bones, because to walk away is to sell your soul. Sometimes all that matters is to dare, to dream, to defy. To stand at the edge of the sky and scream _faster, farther, higher_ into the void so big and empty it’ll be three thousand years before the echoes bounce back and someone hears and takes up the challenge.

Someday, gravity will win, but that day is not today.

Today, here and now, there are stars behind his eyes and wind in his hair and John’s touch on his skin. A million words to describe that and they all mean victory.

He floats somewhere on the far side of the sky.

Weightless.

Free.

Laughing at gravity for as long as he can.

 


End file.
